The Best Bulking Diet for Ectomorphs Isn’t a Diet at All

It can be hard to figure out what the best diet for ectomorphs is. When you search for the healthiest diets, you’ll find diets that are designed to help people lose weight. And that makes sense. After all, at least in the United States, the CDC estimates that only 1.9% of people are underweight. Wanting to gain weight is quite rare.

The reason the CDC cares about this stuff is because so many people are running into health problems from being overweight. As a result, most people need to adopt various diets to help them lose weight. This has become the standard recommendation for improving health: choose a diet that helps you lose weight.

In fact, the very term “dieting” implies that we should be restricting foods and calories to help us eat less. But what if we’re trying to gain weight? Do ectomorphs need an anti-diet?

Yes. We do.

I had coffee a few weeks back with a good friend of mine from Montreal. I had just finished a couple months of the Bony to Beastly program, and I’d put on 20ish pounds of muscle since she last saw me. She was wowed by my progress and told me I looked a Hell of a lot stronger. My physical health was obviously not a problem, but she was worried that I was headed down the road to obsession. She knows that I barely train 3 hours per week, so there’s obviously no obsessive behaviour there. But she also knows that I’m extremely fascinated by the role that nutrition plays with fat loss, health and building muscle—especially for us ectomorphs. So, despite the fact that we had just finished pouring rum into our coffees, she was concerned that I was developing an obsession with eating healthy foods and only healthy foods.

The interesting thing is that eating healthy and only healthy foods can actually hinder your results. Many people struggle to build muscle, lose fat, love life, and accomplish their goals because they place too much emphasis on “healthy” eating. The true secret to becoming superhuman isn’t to eat superfoods, it’s to eat “Clark Kent” foods—everyday foods that will give you superhuman results.

Underweight Ectomorph to Obsessed Bodybuilder?

I used to suffer from what I now call “apparent anorexia”, where I would dream of being more muscular but often have strangers wondering “does this guy have an eating disorder?” I was 6’2 and 130 pounds, with a body that made starving female runway models jealous. Damn ectomorph genetics. In fact, my dad was in the same skinny boat at my age, despite infamously being able to finish several entrees at a time at restaurants. Our diets may not have been the best, but we weren’t intentionally making ourselves thin—quite the opposite. This is an example of me having no idea what I was doing nutritionally, and quite obviously it wasn’t working out for me.

Now, 55 pounds of muscle heavier and with my “genetics” soundly defeated, I’ve been accused of something a little bit more flattering: orthorexia. “Orthorexia” is an unhealthy obsession with eating only extremely healthy foods. The accusation raises a very interesting point, even though I consider my interest in nutrition quite psychologically healthy. I mean, I’ve never enjoyed what I eat more than now, and I neither crave nor avoid going out for a few beers and some suicide wings with friends. I’m also extremely happy with my physique, even as I push myself for health and strength improvements.

This isn’t always the case with nutrition-loving guys though, and many dudes perpetually follow extremely strict and limited diets consisting of supplements and superfoods. Does this give them results? Of course. Does it give them the best results, though? No. In fact, most people following the popular diet trends run into nutrient deficiencies.

The Problem with Restrictive Diets

Part of the reason they run into deficiencies is simply because they’re consuming fewer calories. Eating fewer calories means that fewer nutrients are coming in overall, which makes it more likely that you won’t get enough of them (study).

But this is where things get wild. Health-conscious people who are on restrictivediets have the highest chance of suffering from nutrient deficiencies, even when comparing them against the general population. In fact, nutrient deficiencies are common among athletes and bodybuilders (study, study, study, study, study). The people who pay the most attention to their diets are suffering for it.

The reason for this is pretty obvious when you give these diets a look-over. Eating a “clean” bodybuilding diet, for example, is kind of a weird way to eat. It’s usually based around just a few foods: skinless chicken breast, egg whites, lean cuts of steak, olive oil, fish oil, spinach, broccoli, sweet potatoes, brown rice, tuna, oats, protein powder and creatine.

I mean, if you’re cutting out dairy, potatoes, fruits, egg yolks, fatty meat, and so on, it’s no surprise that you’re going to run into some problems. You can’t pick a list of twelve “clean” foods, eat them day in and day out and expect them to add up to a balanced diet.

Most cultures have found a way of meeting their nutritional needs, and over time these practices become cultural traditions. Mexicans can’t just go Paleo and cut out beans, Northern Europeans can’t just cut out dairy because it’s an animal product, Americans can’t just cut out fruits because of the carbs/fructose, and us Canadians can’t just cut out polar bear steaks because of the saturated fat.

If you deprive it of a food group that’s commonly consumed in your culture (grains, dairy, breakfast, carbs, sugars, beaver tails, etc) you leave a nutritional hole that needs to be plugged. I’m not saying you’re stuck eating brussels sprouts even if you hate them. These holes can be plugged. If you need to (or want to) avoid a certain type of food that’s okay. I’m just saying that you need to be mindful of it.

The interesting thing is that despite all the hype, in order to look like Superman you shouldn’t be restricting evil foods, eating “superfoods,” and following trendy diets. Instead, you should be eating Clark Kent foods—staple foods.

Trendy Diets Do Work,When the Fundamentals Are Also Handled.

If you eat a plant-based diet that focuses on whole unprocessed foods (and supplement with leucine) you can build a ton of muscle. Similarly, if you follow a meat-rich paleo diet, you can also achieve an incredible physique. Eating nine times a day works. Eating two square meals can work too, assuming you take in the same quantity and quality of nutrition. If you find that your lifestyle or moral code meshes well with a certain doctrine then great—you can probably make it work wonders for you. Most diet fads do work, at least in part, but probably not for the reason you think they do.

Don’t suffer any delusions though. Whether you eat three meals a day or twelve, you’ll get comparable results if the foods you’re eating are the same. Plant-based pea protein blends are an awesome source of protein, but so is steak. There are many valid ways to get in the macronutrients you need to accomplish your goals.

“Superfoods” Are Incredibly Healthy,When Incorporated Into a Balanced Diet.

Blueberries are fiercely rich in antioxidants and polyphenols, broccoli has fat and toxin fighting properties, flax is a great source of polyunsaturated fats, and turmeric has incredible anti-inflammatory properties. If you love these foods then fantastic—eat plenty of them. Knowing about them and their benefits is great. I love trying out weird superfoods, and many of them taste fantastic.

Blueberries rock, but so do apples and oranges—everyday Clark Kent foods. Chick peas are great, but so are yams. Don’t place too much emphasis on superfoods or super supplements, because that’s not how a superhuman body is built. Chances are they won’t produce a noticeable difference in your results unless you figure out a great overall approach to eating.

Consider this study, where blueberries are being examined for their superfood-like phytochemical and antioxidant levels. The premise is that blueberries might be able to improve strength training recovery times, thus allowing you to build muscle more quickly. One group of study participants was given 2.2 pounds of blueberries between workouts, while the control group was given 2.2 pounds of regular fruits (bananas, apple juice, etc). Both were in the form of fruit smoothies, and neither group knew which type of smoothie they were drinking. The result? Eating 2.2 pounds of Blueberries sliiightly improved muscle recovery versus the control group.

Now check out this study, where participants started strength training and eating at a calorie surplus. The first group, who didn’t alter their diets at all, gained 3 pounds of muscle in 8 weeks just from the strength training. Pretty good. The second group, who consumed an extra 356g carbs and 106g protein powder, gained over 6 pounds of lean mass. More than double the muscle gains! The third group, who consumed an extra 438g carbs and just 24g protein powder, gained 7.5 pounds of lean mass!

These weren’t fancy carbs—just simple sugar and starch powders. A potato, fruit or bagel would have had the same effect. Interestingly enough, eating more bananas and potatoes, it seems, result in more muscle gains than even consuming protein powders.

The moral of the story? Superfoods can make the tiniest of differences, so if you’re looking to gain 1.1 pounds of muscle instead of 1 pound of muscle this week then go for it. How do you double your gains? Eat large amounts of staple foods. (Easier said than done, I know.) The problem is that people fall hook line and sinker for supplement ads and novel dieting strategies, when the simple truth is that a rock solid training program and whole hearty foods is where the real results are built.

The “Anti-Diet” for Ectomorphs

If you’re trying to bulk up, build muscle, gain strength, and improve your health, that’s probably going to require that you lift weights and change your diet. And when it comes to your diet, I’m not saying that you shouldn’t learn about nutrition. In fact you absolutely should.

If you don’t have the physique that you want, obviously some things need to change. If you’re a naturally skinny guy like me, then you might even need to change your lifestyle quite a bit. What I’m saying is that you don’t need to adopt any kind of extreme diet.

We help our members build a bulking diet that suits their preferences, lifestyle, and budget. Our members in Texas are eating quite different from our members in Latin America, who eat a very different diet from our members in India. And that’s okay. You can bulk up on a wide variety of foods. If you’re reading this from halfway across the world, rest assured that your local foods will be perfectly fine for bulking up. You don’t need to import your foods from Los Angeles because some fitness blogger there is in love with grass-fed beef or whatever the new fad is.

A good ectomorph bulking “diet” should be built around the foods that you enjoy. Within reason, of course. We can’t build your muscles entirely out of McDonalds and Pop Tarts, no. But we can build them out of hamburgers and chicken parmesan. You may want to eat a side of green beans with your burgers to make your diet a bit more balanced, but there’s no need to eat a restrictive diet.

Skinny guys trying to build muscle and gain weight are the last guys who should be restricting foods for no reason. All this restrictive stuff is really more so for people trying to avoid foods that are easy to overeat. We’re trying to overeat, and we’re intentionally consuming a lot of calories. We’ve got a lot of room in our diets for the things that we love, even if they aren’t technically “clean” foods.

Even dessert can help. When it comes to eating enough food to build impressive amount of muscle, us skinny guys often struggle. That’s one of our biggest struggles. It’s a complicated issue, too. There are a lot of reasons why it’s so hard for ectomorphs to gain weight. Processed foods and desserts offer us an easy way to get more calories in. So long as we’re also getting the nutrients that we need to be healthy and build muscle from other foods, well, a dessert will sure help us hit our calorie goals.

We aren’t taking a casual approach to our bulking diets because we don’t care about results. Rest assured, our goal is to help you build muscle as quickly as humanly possible. We use this approach because this how you get results.

I’ve always had a love-hate relationship with superfoods and supplements. It’s fascinating, but it becomes so easy to forget the bigger picture.

Consider this example. Lots of struggling ectomorphs are tempted to take the popular supplement branched chain amino acids (BCAAs) after hearing about its muscle-building properties. BCAAs are a low-calorie way of getting leucine, primarily, which is fantastic for building muscle. What’s another way to get BCAAs? Drinking milk, eating meat, or frying up some eggs. A decent sized steak has 13-15g of BCAAs in it. That’s 2-3 scoops of fancy BCAA powder in every steak.

And not only are these whole foods a better way for your body to absorb the BCAAs, they’re also packed full of other muscle-building and healthful nutrients—and they’re full of calories!

The photo up above is of a steak cooked up with some onions and garlic, and served alongside a half-loaf of buttery bread and some broccoli. 950 calories. You could order something similar at a restaurant, or serve yourself up a dish like this at Thanksgiving.

It’s a pretty normal meal. But if you were trying to sell it in a supplement store you could say that the starches in the bread are reloading our muscle and liver glycogen stores, the fancy amino acids in the steak are boosting muscle-protein synthesis, the broccoli is proprietary blend of phytonutrients that will improve your performance, and the butter has monounsaturated fat and dietary cholesterol in it, which are great for testosterone production.

You have a cupboard full of foods that can rival the very best muscle-building supplements on the market.

Eat irresponsibly large amounts of fruits and vegetables. Carrots, apples, pineapples, cherries, berries, oranges, sea cucumbers—whatever you want. All fruits and vegetables are healthy in their own way, and a variety is best. If your appetite or stomach are a limiting factor though, as they often are for us skinny dudes, you may find it helpful to stick to the ones that are high in calories though.

Base your diet around your personal preferences and personal convictions. You can build muscle on a vegan diet. You can build muscle on a Paleo diet. You can build muscle in India, China, Greece, Mexico, etc.

A good rule of thumb is to get around 80% of your calories from whole foods. And then when it comes to choosing which whole foods to eat, choose a wide variety of foods that you actually want to eat. If you can do that, you’re going to have a good chance of avoiding nutrient deficiencies. You’ll also have a much easier time bulking up.

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31 Comments

Jeffon June 19, 2012 at 7:24 am

Good stuff. The reason I like this program a lot because I know that you guys care about nutrition. Its addicting watching yourself change so quickly. It’s hard to believe less than 6 months ago I was 22 lbs lighter. I eat great everyday now, better than I have in a long time. It’s okay to cheat and have a drink or eat something that has no nutritional value whatsoever. It’s knowing that if you do it all of the time, you probably won’t be so beastly in the long run. I never used to look at any labels in the stores either. Now I know from reading tons of labels what is good and what is just complete and utter crap. My diet now? Whole foods, organic vegetables, raw foods, organic meat are my staple foods and will be for life. Do I swear by eating these foods? No, but I try to eat them when I am at home which is where I eat the most. I don’t even shop at a “super” market really anymore because 95 percent of whats on the shelf is just processed non-sense. So nice to be a part of a program that is always teaching me more about what I am eating and how it effects my life style.

I hope to be coming on board next month. So far, everything seems AWESOME!!! Thanks for the time and effort you guys have put in to this. Reminds me of the “Scrawny to Brawny” book and program, BUT much more relative to me and my life. And you guys are waaayyyy cooler, just sayin’.

Thanks man, we appreciate it! Scrawny to Brawny is pretty cool. I have the book and really enjoyed it. In some ways our program is somewhat similar, and in some ways really quite different. I’m glad you prefer our approach, and I really hope you decide to join us!

I am in love with the incorporation of concepts such as “love of life and accomplishment of goals”, along with “muscle building and fat loss”! Way to keep it balanced, Bony-to-BEASTly, I love seeing you guys’ results while you’re not only maintaining, but boosting the social/adventurous aspects of your lifestyles.

Keep it up, I’m rooting for you and I’ll make sure my next apartment has bigger doors to allow for visits!

Hey Shane, awesome website, full of top-notch nutrition and training info relevant to us ectomorphs. I was just wondering, is it a good idea to reduce (or even eliminate) our intake of starchy carbs on days we’re not training (I myself perform full-body workouts, three days a week)? If so, how should one go about doing so?

That depends on your goals and body type! Carb cycling becomes more powerful when trying to lose fat, not build muscle … but it’s a pretty solid strategy in a number of situations, and our program does use it. If you’re an ectomorph trying to rapidly build muscle you’d probably still want a fair bit of starchy carbs on your rest days though.

When you get to a weight you’re happy with, or you’re trying to lose fat, you may want to keep your carbs fairly low on rest days, yeah. How do you do that? You fill up on leafy/fibrous veggies (broccoli, green beans, spinach, lettuce, celery, etc) when you’d otherwise be eating starches. Replace your side of potatoes with a side of salad kind of thing.

Ran across your site doing a Google search for the prefix, ‘ecto’. What a cool site and concept and approach!

I’m not proper subject matter for your program, though–I’m 47 yars old, 5’6″ or 7″, and now overweight. I sure wish you had a program for guys like me, because the likes of P90X is too brutal for my destroyed knees from athletically over-doing it (to make up for my size) when I was young.

Thanks for the kind words man, glad you’re liking our stuff! A lot of the stuff we post has to deal with guys in general, so definitely stay tuned. A lot of us ectomorphs have a little bit of a extra body fat hanging around too, so we do deal with fat loss … it’s just not where our emphasis lies. We might be digging into it in future posts though.

I just put together a fat loss pdf you might be interested in, actually. Shoot me an email at us@bonytobeastly.com if you want to check it out 🙂

Dudes. You rock. For the past three nights I have been drinking in your articles. I am digging it! I have been VERY active for about 7 years now, but I am ready to be a beast. I have probably been TOO active actually. I am currently hovering at about 150 and I am six-foot. I have known about you guys for a while and been implementing the tiny pieces that I extract from your articles. I am in the process of saving for the program, and it should just be a few weeks longer!! Nutrition has ALWAYS been my hangup. I also have trouble fitting enough calories into my tiny stomach and even smaller appetite. I have been eating a lot of chili lately and it fits in my stomach really well, is high in calories, and SO easy to prepare. What other foods would you recommend that share the same three properties as the chili??

Yeah … nutrition seems to be the biggest struggling point for guys with our body type. We put a lot of emphasis on our program, not in that we restrict a lot of stuff, but in that we try to get clever with trying to make it easy, quick and enjoyable to comfortably eat enough food to build all kinds of muscle.

Chili pretty much rocks. One of my all-time favourite meals, and I’ve got a bunch sitting in my fridge and freezer right now.

Stews, curries, casseroles, gumbos – tons of options! You can even make batches of homemade protein bars (which have the added advantage of being portable).

You can carb and calorie cycle if you like. Our program involves some of that by default, since our workout shake spikes our carbs and calories on training days. (We don’t cycle much – just around 400 extra calories on training days.)

You certainly don’t HAVE to carb/calorie cycle though, and the potential benefits are relatively mild. What’s most important is hitting your overall protein/calorie goals.

As for carbs, proteins and fats, check this article out. We recently updated it, so it’s quite current 🙂

However one must be very careful. “Samson was given supernatural strength by God in order to combat his enemies and perform heroic feats, such as killing a lion, slaying an entire army with only the jawbone of an ass, and destroying a pagan temple. Samson had two vulnerabilities, however: his attraction to untrustworthy women and his hair, without which he was powerless. These vulnerabilities ultimately proved fatal for him.”

Im super skinny, im 115lb and I want to see real results, im 19 so my money is limted, I just dont wanna waste no.money if I out my heart into it and I see a lil results, I got tons of questions so if I can get your email I will proceed to checkout and go from Bony to Beastly

Our program is pretty thorough, and we teach you how to troubleshoot the most common problems us skinny guys run into… but we also include the community and coaching. If you were failing to get results after your first week, you’d just let us know and we’d help you adjust what you’re doing so that you could get results in your second week 🙂

As an old guy of 59, I had become skinny fat and came to the conclusion that I needed to fix myself . A carb addict, I stopped breads and pastas, sweets and cereals. Two weeks later, my lipid panel had normalized entirely. I hope to join you program after new year once a strained shoulder heals (steroid shot + PT). Started resistance training in September and new diet 5 weeks ago. Truly wonderful to have triceps for the first time in my life. As an older man, I’d be ecstatic to gain 20 pounds over the next year or so. How old is your uh, er… most mature trainee? Thanks so much.

We’d love to have ya, man. Most members in the community are in their teens, twenties and thirties… but we’ve got a few older guys as well. So long as your old folks’ home has a gym, you’re set 😉

(You’ll want to stick with the basic program though, as we begin with some classic bodybuilding training that will be good for your ligaments and tendons. You’ll also want clearance from your doc, of course.)

I am 6’1″ I am definitely a skinny guy….came out of HS at 6’0″ and 135 lbs. Now at ~170 lbs. I do Intermittent Fasting (LeanGains protocol). I have done it for 2 yrs almost. Does fine, I make sure I get my calories and macros in and eat what I want to. So IF is not a problem….does make it tougher to bulk, but for cutting it’s great.

Intermittent fasting is definitely suitable for cutting (especially for fit young men in their twenties). Like you found though, it makes bulking a lot harder, which is why we don’t recommend it. Aside from making bulking harder / less pleasant, it can also potentially lead to issues with acid reflux or whatnot if you’re trying to fit 1,500 or 2,000+ calorie meals into a small stomach in short succession, which is not unrealistic as a skinny guy with a large metabolism who’s well into a bulk.

Anecdotally, I tried it for a little while and found that eating 4,200 calories within an 8 hour window was way too much for my stomach to handle, no matter how I split it up. It’s the only time I’ve ever had to go to the doctor due to my diet, and it took a long while to go back to feeling healthy again afterwards.

It also limits the periods of muscle protein synthesis that you’d experience during the day, making bulking not just less pleasant/achievable/healthy, but also less effective. You’d only be building muscle at a good pace during certain periods of the day, instead of building muscle at a maximum rate all day long.

For cutting I agree that it’s great though. I’ve cut with and without intermittent fasting and have no real preference. Both approaches work well, both produce good results 🙂

Since this is a site for skinny guys trying to build muscle, IF is usually something we recommend avoiding. (We do have guys who go on cuts though, and we present it as an option in our cutting guide.)

hey Shane, So I’m 51 and 6′ 1″ 170 lbs. been skinny all my life, just recently ( past 6-7 yrs) I gained fat, in gut, lower back and chest area. I’m not sure if that qualifies me as a fat skinny or not. I am seriously thinking of getting your program, and was wondering what equipment would be needed? I have bowflex selecttech dumbells, bench, curl bar with about 50 lbs of weights for it, what else would I need?

I think the marketing is pretty epic. The scientific community still doesn’t understand a lot of the benefits of food. I remember reading a study that found (mild) mental retardation in people who were carelessly avoiding animal products due to a creatine deficiency in their brain. That’s just one of many possible deficiencies, and some deficiencies can take years to manifest. What about nitrates and choline and different types of fibre and whatnot? What about all the things we don’t even know about yet?

In addition to that, some parts of our digestive system we just don’t really understand at all. Our microbiome, for example. How does a diet made up of meal replacements affect the bajillions of bacteria in our guts?

Is there a part of our hormonal or digestive system that we don’t even know about yet? A little while ago we didn’t know about probiotics and whatnot. Are there other systems in play that we’re still unaware of?

So the grandiose marketing scares me a little. But meal replacements in general aren’t really all that revolutionary. They’ve been around for a long time now. When Jared and I first began building muscle we would take Myoplex when we couldn’t have a real meal. Same deal—protein, maltodextrin, a bunch of vitamins, etc.

I would treat Soylent, Jake, Bertrand, etc. the same way you would treat any other processed food. Try your best to get 80% of your calories from whole foods, and the rest you can get from wherever you like.

When building muscle though, calories and protein are the most important things. If you really aren’t able to hit your calorie or protein goals, sometimes you’ve got to do whatever it takes to make that happen. Maybe that means getting more of your calories from processed foods.

[…] stuff we were doing was also excessive. There’s no need to eat every 3 hours, there’s no need to eat a perfectly “clean” bodybuilder’s diet, and there’s no need to eat 2g of protein per pound of bodyweight. A lot of those […]

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Bony to Beastly does not offer medical advice and does not replace your relationship with your doctor. Furthermore, we often showcase exceptional results. Keep in mind that your results may vary, and may not be the same or even similar.

Bony to Beastly is a project created and maintained by Foxhound Ltd, registered in the Province of Ontario, Canada from 2013–2019. Marco Walker-Ng, BHSc, PTS, PN is certified through Canadian Fitness Professionals.

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